“Vault 7” is the most comprehensive release of US spying files ever made public

On Tuesday, the leak-focused site founded by Julian Assange released thousands of alleged CIA documents purporting to show how the agency has been able to crack open devices from Apple, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft.

In the past, the site has published all types of sensitive top-secret information including US diplomatic cables and foreign exchange emails, emails from members of governing bodies for US political parties, espionage orders, and country negotiating positions on international trade agreements, among others.

On Tuesday, the latest bit of WikiLeaks content to be released was codenamed “Vault7” Year Zero and contains CIA internal documentation of a “massive arsenal” of some of the agency’s most important hacking tools used to penetrate systems around the world. Some of these techniques include weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware, viruses and remote control systems, to name a few. The website has carefully reviewed the zero-day exploits and has avoided distributing any “armed” cyberweapons until the worldwide security community can review how the information can be examined and disarmed before being released to the public.

While most third-party sources are unable to verify whether the Year Zero documents are real or have been altered, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said during a press conference streamed to Periscope, “We have quite a lot of exploits … that we want to disarm before we think about publishing it.”

Includes details on how to breach multiple desktop and mobile OSes

According to Assange, Vault 7 is the most comprehensive release of US spying files ever made public, with dates ranging over the past three years. The files include details on the software capabilities of the agency, such as how to compromise smart TVs, Apple iPhones, Android devices, and operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Other copy-and-paste code included shows basic steps involved in the exploitation of a UEFI boot sequence. The first batched released so far contains 7,818 web pages with a total of 943 attachments from the Center for Cyber Intelligence.

Vault 7 "Weeping Angel" Smart TV exploit

“We’re going to work with some of these manufacturers to try and get these antidotes out there,” Assange says.

Of the leaks published so far, one of most alarming pieces of information include the suggestion that secure messaging apps using end-to-end encryption have been compromised as well. This would include the popular WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and even Confide – the one that White House staffers have been using to communicate outside of the CIA’s operational reach.

Security experts thus far, however, claim that the methods listed in the documents do not specify how to compromise the apps themselves but only the mobile operating systems they are used with. Snowden has also confirmed this via twitter, saying that iOS and Android platforms were compromised rather than individual communication apps using end-to-end encryption methods.

Assange: Android and iOS have “significant problems”

So far, Apple has said it patched most of the disclosed vulnerabilities with the latest release of iOS for its mobile users. Samsung, however, says it is “urgently looking” into the information after one of the documents listed a method to turn its Smart TV lineup into secret surveillance devices. Microsoft says it is aware of the alleged cyberweapon tools and it currently “looking into it.” Google says that it has already patched most vulnerabilities in the latest Android release but must inform its mobile partners that their custom releases of its software may still be left vulnerable.

Assange warns that due to the large variety of Android manufacturers, there is no way to automatically update each custom software install with the latest security patches. “That means that only people who are aware of it can fix it," Assange said. "Android is significantly more insecure than iOS, but both of them have significant problems."

According to Paul Rosenzweig, former deputy assistant secretary of policy at the US Department of Homeland Security, there is an “untold value” to the CIA if the tools are currently in use. He says it is unlikely that the CIA is the only group that knows about the holes, but there is “no reason” to think that some of these vulnerabilities have not already been disclosed to foreign governments including China and Russia.

“If Samsung TV is inside Vladimir Putin's home, this is a good thing [for the CIA].”

For now, the White House has yet to comment on the leaks, refusing to authenticate or confirm the existence of the tools. “I think obviously that's not something that has been fully evaluated,” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer. “And if it was, I would not comment from here on that.”

After being out of the spotlight for a while, Julian Assange is attempting to get Sweden to start its investigations into his sex allegations while he is still locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy. His lawyers have written a scathing op-ed piece in a Swedish newspaper, demanding that the prosecutor presiding over the rape and sexual allegations case to question the WikiLeaks founder in London.

Thomas Olsson and Per Samuelsson wrote in the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) yesterday that Assange wants to be treated according Swedish law, all of a sudden. They claim that ynder Swedish law, investigations are allowed to be "adapted to the situation in which the investigated party finds himself" so that unnecessary inconvenience is not caused to the party involved. Prosecutor Marianne Ny has refused to interrogate Assange in London, stating that to do so would be against Swedish legal practice and would constitute special treatment, but Olsson and Samuelsson disagree. They seem to think that prosecutor Marianne Ny must fly out to the UK, interview him, and then charge him, where he can safely ignore them.

Olsson and Samuelsson suggest in the piece that Ny should be replaced by a "superior prosecutor" able to look at the case with "fresh eyes". However lawyer Elisabeth Massi Fritz representing the younger of the two alleged victims of Assange is also miffed at the media’s handling of the case. She said that the press keeps giving publicity to Assange, even when in sex cases people’s names are not mentioned. The lawyer representing the younger of the two women, Elisabeth Massi Fritz, criticised the media for naming Assange, since suspects and accusers are rarely named in the Swedish press.

She is also annoyed with Swedish politicians commenting on the case on a live national television debate in Sweden, about whether Sweden's Prosecutor-General should drop the investigation into Assange completely.

“Why have courts when we can hold votes in daily newspapers and televised debates?" Fritz wrote. "Why should an exception be made for Assange?"

Fritz agrees with the prosecutor that Assange should not be given special treatment.

“The only thing that is keeping Assange shut up in that embassy is himself."

One of the World's worst dates, Julian Assange has claimed that the FBI had tried to bribe the outfit's staff. Like many of Assange's comments he did not provide any evidence so we guess we will have to wait for a whistle-blower in the FBI to tell us what it did.

Assange threatened to break controversial super-injunctions if the details were leaked to him. He published details of “five or six” super-injunctions in the past. However, in a bizarre moment, he admitted that Wikileaks might resort to a super-injunction itself in order to protect its sources.

He accused the British public of an annoying middle-class squeamishness over the publication of secret cables and documents and would rather destroy a revolution rather than have something leaked . He insisted that he had seen no evidence that anyone had lost their lives as a result of Wikileaks disclosures, despite Government warnings that this would happen.

Opening up societies around the world may mean fatalities are a price worth paying, he said.

You know the scenario – starting of righteous, ending up a tin-hatted man. The man behind whistleblowing site Wikileaks has now dubbed Facebook “the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented.”

Assange said that the social networking site is the most comprehensive database containing people’s relationships, addresses, locations, communications, etc. He argued that the data is in the US and thus directly accessible to US intelligence.

Assange said:”Facebook, Google, Yahoo, all these major U.S. organizations have built-in interfaces for U.S. intelligence". He pointed out that the US intelligence is not actually running Facebook but that every time you add friends, you’re doing their work for free by building a database.

Of course, Assange forgets to note that most of these pieces of the Man’s database are as irrelevant as they get. Seriously, 1,285 profile pictures of yourself is not something the US intelligence is dying to rummage through.

A former Swiss private banker is going to hand over data on hundreds of offshore bank account holders to the WikiLeaks website today.

Rudolf Elmer once headed the office of Julius Baer in the Cayman Islands until he was fired by the bank in 2002. He is going to go on trail in Switzerland for breaching bank secrecy.

Wikileaks is going to get two CDs which will contain names and account information of around 2000 individuals who have parked money offshore. Yesterday it was hoped that Julian Assange would be there to pick up the CD, but it is not clear if that would be a breach of probation.

Elmer said that WikiLeaks was his last hope as he couldn't get my message out. Blum, Elmer's lawyer, told Reuters: "The story is really about banks and banking, about bank secrecy and the damage it does to society when it's employed to hide tax evasion, money laundering and corruption."

Elmer told the Swiss newspaper Der Sonntag that the data involved multimillionaires, international companies and hedge funds from countries including the United States, Germany and Britain.

British authorities have confirmed the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. London’s Metropolitan Police announced that Assange was taken into custody at 9:30 local time.

Assange’s lawyer Mark Stephens had earlier announced plans deliver Assange to British police for questioning in a rape investigation launched by Swedish authorities.

Stephens maintains his client’s innocence and claims that the dispute stems from a dispute over consensual sex, rather than rape. He described the investigation as a political stunt and said that Assange was very keen to clear his name.

He also questioned the decision to issue an arrest warrant against Assange, as he had not even received a formal summons for interrogation.

The boss of online Whistleblowing site Wikileaks seems seems set to turn himself in today.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks , is expected to pop into a South East of London police station and head over to a magistrates' court. He is wanted over allegations of sexual assault in Sweden. He is currently in hiding in the south-east of England but police are understood to have the necessary paperwork to arrest him.

Mark Stephens, Assange’s British lawyer, told the Telegraph that he was in discussions about Assange going to the police by consent. Assange insisted that he could run Wikileaks even while the sex charge hung over his head. The outfit suffered a set back when Swiss authorities closed one of his bank accounts, one of the sources of funding for the Wikileaks site.

Postfinance, the financial arm of Swiss Post, said: “The Australian citizen provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process.”

Kristinn Hrafnsson, spokesman for Wikileaks , claimed Assange had been forced to keep a low profile after several threats on his life. Sweden’s Supreme Court upheld a court order to detain Assange for questioning on suspicion of “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion” after he appealed against two lower court rulings. He denies the allegations.

It looks like Stephens has been briefed to fight an extradition to Sweden and keep the Wikileaks boss in the UK. It is not clear what will happen if he fails or Assange goes inside. Assange has threatened the world+dog that he will release the code and unlock thousands of unedited secret documents on the Wikileaks torrent if he is arrested.

Some of those files contain the names of US contacts in Afghanistan and it will amount to a death sentence for many of them. It seems that Assange hopes this password will mean that he will have a get out of jail free card for any criminal offence he might have committed in the past or the future, making him above the law.

A senior Swedish prosecutor has ordered the reopening of a rape investigation into Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Public Prosecutions Director Marianne Ny said that despite another prosecutor cancelling an investigation into the rape allegation, there was reason to believe a crime has been committed and that the crime was classified as rape. Assange denies any wrongdoing saying the accusations are "without basis".

Apparently the Swedish woman who accused Assange of raping her has appealed to another prosecutor. Ny said of the rape allegation that "more investigations are necessary before a final decision can be made". She also said that anotheraccusation of molestation against Assange should be reclassified and investigated as a case of sexual coercion and sexual molestation.